


Bellicoso

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Bitterness, F/F, Governor Vera, One Shot, Poetry, Prisoner Joan, Reading Aloud, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 16:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15689193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Bellicoso meaning warlike, aggressive.Joan indulges in reading poetry and dismisses the night-time intruder in her room. In other words, Joan reads T.S. Eliot until she's rudely interrupted.





	Bellicoso

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheWentworthWordsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWentworthWordsmith/gifts).



> Thank you for your friendship and confidentiality, my friend! I treasure the books you sent me. May this uplift your spirits, Jane. :)
> 
> This is a work for all, though, please enjoy!

 

In insidious intent, a woman broods and waits. Proper discipline keeps her composed. From one uniform to another, another chess problem appears. The prison world would be a lesser place without her. This, she knows. Tonight, Joan Ferguson fancies herself a poet.

Heels echo in memory. An old flame possesses a self-destructive streak. Miss Vera Bennett is a glutton for punishment. In storms Judas, her fists coiled by her narrow waist. Joan pays her no mind. There are no strings for her to play so she manipulates the text, instead. Each stanza hums in her veins. It’s a piece she’s returned to many a time.

Full of true grit, Joan delivers herself with tact. The iron curtain falls down, free from the ponytail which serves as a familiar restriction. Her fingers, those scarred and those unmarred, tame the hissing pages. It’s a poem from a collection. A pity the pages have been sullied. Turned yellow from age, marginalia defaces prison property. The Great Snake lays on the uncomfortable, stiff cot with her torso upright. Iron thoughts occur in that head of hers. Her silhouette projects a menace against the painted brick wall.

As the deity of deception, Hated Meduza’s dark hair lures in the hungry. Poison rests on the bed of her tongue. Poised like a marble statue, Joan reads “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleinstein with a Cigar.” It’s been done before. It’s a gibberish title for naïve eyes. Vera dismisses the text as absolute rubbish.

“Who clipped the lion’s wings and flea’d his rump and pared his claws?”

T.S. Eliot flows from her mouth, akin to a low, pleasurable hum.

Vera scans the page. A confiscated item, a banned book, that an officer should have removed. These are her false accusations, her reasons for trespassing in Ferguson’s cell. Yet, she listens as if she’s still the eager pupil. She remembers Ferguson – the true reigning Governor – in the Garden, a Snake ruling Eden. Vera’s knuckles kiss her dry lips. Oh, how Bennett’s reign pales in comparison to Ferguson’s.

Putrefaction has taken over purification. Her face worries itself new lines. There are no longer stars in Governor Bennett’s eyes. They’ve blown out like supernovas, have dimmed with age and the grievance of this all-consuming, thankless job. The golden crowns lose their glimmer, lack their luster. She cannot hold still so she shifts her weight from foot to foot. Keeps her distance from the beast in the room.

Wentworth’s winding corridors have become the Wasteland. Strange Gods compose their quartets: Will, Jake, Joan, Vera. It boils down to those four. There are never only two sides. The bird, in this case, is Vera squawking her indignation. Enflamed by deceptive cadences, she snaps.

“I’m not here for you to read me fairy tales, Ferguson.”

The villain keeps her eyes on the page. She loathes to be disturbed - to be so _rudely_ interrupted.

“Says the Governor who dreamt of being in one,” she bites with an acrid smile, using Lex Talionis to her advantage.

Warped justice drives Virgil and Dante blind. They’ve violated rules on their own terms.

Is it wrong, Vera wonders, to want to _crucify_ Joan?

Irate, she casts her stormy stare at the door sealed shut. She chews on her lips before switching to the inside of her cheek. As her next defense, she folds her arms across her chest which puffs out in faux bravado. Though the grudge (near godly and archaic) remains, Vera reflects on the respect she had for Joan. She could never be a woman like that. Her respect, however, was not so: it’s **envy**.

Shame on her for savoring the view. That regal profile and sensual lips call to her. Even now, she would have preferred a drunken, vodka-infused smile.

A larger audience mourns what could have been. This is no Vita and Virginia though the familiar ache (the loss, the sensation of missing someone) remains.

“You’re reading confiscated material,” the current Governor grasps at straws and bends the truth. Try as she might, she’ll never be as manipulative as her predecessor.

The turn of the page, the turn of the screw, proceeds. Feigned disinterest masks Joan’s gluttonous envy for glory’s crowns. Power is a nasty addiction.

“You’re generalizing.”

For all her venom, Ferguson ridicules with the animosity of a tenured professor. Her pale fingers splay as she raises her brows, her mouth imitating a grimace. It’s a physical joke, a mockery. A tyrant wears Vera to death.

Resigned, Vera seems to experience a setback. She wilts. Her shoulders hunch. Vera takes on old habits again. Rather than her lips, she’s chewed her nails down to violent stubs and ripped cuticles. Her eyes dart away. What might have been and what could have been lingers in the corner of the room, a Burnt Norton fix.

This isn’t her hero anymore. This is just the way they are now.

“I could slot you,” she replies, her voice tinny, her body fraught with tension.

_You wouldn’t dare._

Joan the Conqueror rolls her head to the right. She scrutinizes the mouse who will pluck the thorn from her paw and lift the noose from her neck. This time, she marks her place. The book sleeps soundly on her lap. Though her palms may not be Christ-like, they’re saintly enough to mask the cover.

 “My, my, Vera. Your talk is far from diplomatic.”

At last, Vera parries in this tale of mutual obsession. She steps closer, into the ring, approaching the lonely marital bed.

“You should take up painting with that wild imagination of yours, Joan.”

A hollow laugh interjects.

“Ha.”

Her scarred finger cuts through the air. She invents a story, a monologue, to maintain the interest of her disgruntled keeper.

“As a young girl, I visited a lighthouse seeking-”

Vera listens keenly, but her brows furrow together, her skepticism evident. 

“-out the light in the pitch black. Surely, you’ve heard the story before, Vera. Perhaps... under your bed?”

Woolf is lost on her. The knife twists deeper in her chest. She feels ill, her stomach cramped. Her face loses all color. She wants to scream and sob, to go back to a gentler time. Instead, she offers a murderous glare oozing contempt. Even the kindest can bend over before falling apart completely.

_I told you that in the utmost confidence._

A gruesome death awaits people like Joan.

And how _would_ dear Vera talk about her in the hereafter? Vera hates her. Joan hates Vera. Forgiveness is neither easy nor simple.

“Why do we do this?” 

Full of questions, Vera interrupts. She can scarcely stand the sound of her voice. Their actions echo that of Socrates and Plato. She takes a seat beside the bed, ignoring the coal black stare that remains expressionless. With her head raised to the glaring lights, the scene resembles a warped confession.

The Devil’s manipulations never cease. Joan casts the book aside entirely. Its worn spine contains deep creases. She turns her face to the corner of the room where dark shadows gather. Distance passes across her face.

She took and she took, but she never gave. There was once something virginal in Vera. How she hungered for that still.

“Moored to the shore, as we are-”

She should have taken Vera to the beach.

Just once.

Side by side, they remain seated in the way they used to for their frequent debriefs. Now, Joan longs for the burn of vodka not to twist her marital clay, but to still the animal restlessness within. She keeps still: unmoving, unwavering, caught in the throes of this thing called “petty revenge.”

“I have _always_ been with you.”

Vera’s voice percolates like her kettle in the hours of dawn. In shame, she hides her face. Her hands make for a good mask. The bun begins to ache, bobby pins nipping at her scalp.

“Congratulations, you single-handedly ruined my life,” she gripes though it’s muffled.

There’s a final lesson to be had. Joan offers her riposte, her tongue a skilled weapon that strikes the rough of her mouth.

“You are the architect of your own destruction.”

Dubious, the current Governor shakes her head. Rattles her brain. Flicks her wrist in a last attempt, too tired to go on.

“Do you honestly believe that? Do you find that this... this rule applies to yourself?”

The silence doesn’t lull her. Vera finds it more unnerving than the pitch black underneath her bed.

“... Yes,” Joan answers at last.

Vera barks out a scoff.

So _even_ God is touchable. Imagine that.

Fingers graze her temple. She feels a warm hand on her shoulder. Contradictory to the automaton beside her, Joan Ferguson does not feel like a block of ice. Yet, it’s a temporary affliction. She recoils, the hesitation apparent in the way her eyes shift.

So, Vera reaches out one final time, praying to the fray. Her petite hand falls on top of Joan’s. It feels familiar yet hollow like the pretense of this mutated courtship.

“I can’t save you.”

“I did not expect you to,” she answers without skipping a beat, echoing the last toll of the bell.

Vera’s radio crackles to life. She silences the damned thing.

In misery, the lamb bleats. Joan has yet to swap the teal for her night gown; the clothing would only make her more messianic. Her black hole stare, reeking of contamination and ill intent, flits down to the hand that keeps her tethered – the simple, innocent touch that she pined for, but succeeded in corruption.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is riddled with allusions and metaphors (like many of my other pieces), but there's a special homage to Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot in this. Meduza is intentionally spelled with a "z."
> 
> Also, please note that I hold no animosity towards academia as I am an academic! It's merely a reference I thought befitting for the circumstance.


End file.
